Diverse baleen whale acoustic occurrence around two sub-Antarctic islands : a tale of residents and visitors
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Date
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Publisher
Nature Research
Abstract
Knowledge on the occurrence and behaviour of baleen whales around sub-Antarctic regions is limited, and usually based on short, seasonal sighting research from shore or research vessels and whaling records, neither of which provide accurate and comprehensive year-round perspectives of these animals’ ecology. We investigated the seasonal acoustic occurrence and diel vocalizing pattern of baleen whales around the sub-Antarctic Prince Edward Islands (PEIs) using passive acoustic monitoring data from mid-2021 to mid-2023, detecting six distinct baleen whale songs from Antarctic blue whales, Madagascan pygmy blue whales, fin whales, Antarctic minke whales, humpback whales, and sei whales. Antarctic blue and fin whales were detected year-round whereas the other species’ songs were detected seasonally, including a new Antarctic minke whale bio-duck song sub-type described here for the first time. Antarctic minke and sei whales were more vocally active at night-time whereas the other species had no clear diel vocalizing patterns. Random forest models identified month and/or sea surface temperature as the most important predictors of all baleen whale acoustic occurrence. These novel results highlight the PEIs as a useful habitat for baleen whales given the number of species that inhabit or transit through this region.
Description
DATA AVAILABILITY : Data are provided in the form of acoustic .wav file of all exemplar calls illustrated by the spectrograms in the manuscript figure, an MS Excel Spreadsheet file with baleen whale call occurrence and environmental data, and the R code used for fitting the RF models in https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10719537. Links for downloading environmental data are provided in Table 3.
Keywords
Overwintering ground, Stopover spot, Feeding ground, Year-round habitat, Passive acoustic monitoring, Southern Ocean, Baleen whales
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG-14: Life below water
Citation
Shabangu, F.W., Munoz, T., Van Uffelen, L. 2024, 'Diverse baleen whale acoustic occurrence around two sub-Antarctic islands : a tale of residents and visitors', Scientific Reports, vol. 14, no. 21663, pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-72696-2.